Funk Republic Radio plays, well you guessed it... funk and soul music with live DJ's. Since we launched 2 years ago, we've been streaming MP3 128k.

We now have a mobile iphone app and are getting tons of listeners on their mobile devices. We just fired up a new streaming server to handle these mobile users.

We're trying to decide whether to broadcast at AAC+ 64 or 32. Yes 64 sounds the best, but will our mobile users still experience too much in the way of buffering as compared to a 32k stream which won't sound quite as good but will have in theory a lot less streaming issues.

I listen to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me live from my local NPR affil, WUSF, via 128 and 64 MP3 streams on Shoutcast, and while I can hear the difference, given that I'm using the built in speaker, I don't really care. I think a lot of it depends on whether your listeners are using the built in speaker, or headset/externals.

A followup: I have no streaming problems even at 128 on Sprint 4G, and only occasionally at 3G. So my snap reaction would be "if you don't mind providing 64, then do both if it's easy and inexpensive; that way, listeners can optimize for what they need".

Baylink wrote:I listen to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me live from my local NPR affil, WUSF, via 128 and 64 MP3 streams on Shoutcast, and while I can hear the difference, given that I'm using the built in speaker, I don't really care. I think a lot of it depends on whether your listeners are using the built in speaker, or headset/externals.

Any way to tell?

Yes, that makes sense. If you're listening using the built-in speaker on almost any phone... probably doesnt matter a huge big. Get in to some good headphones and the difference becomes more apparent.

Ha, ha... yeah but only hi-fi nuts would even think twice about that. It's hilarious to me but it seems like 90% of the average public simply listen. They know when audio quality sounds very, very, very bad. But other than that, many just don't even notice.